Denial is not a river in Egypt

Not See's and Nazis

conspiracies against democracy don't need lots of people to participate
in them, they need millions, however, to stay silent to ensure their success.

"It is not possible
to awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep."
-- Navajo proverb

As the enemy drew nearer Moscow, instead of the Muscovites' view of their situation growing more serious, it became more frivolous, as is always the case with people who see a great danger approaching. At the threat of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one quite reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of averting it; the other still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and escape from the general march of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and think about what is pleasant.
--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

You know of the disease called "sleeping sickness." There also exists a sleeping sickness of the soul. Its most dangerous aspect is that one is unaware of its coming. That is why you have to be careful. As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take it as a warning. You soul suffers if you live superficially.
--Albert Schweitzer

"One day you can tell all this to anyone who's willing to listen. No one will believe you. Despite the fact that anyone who makes the slightest effort can see what is waiting at the future."
-- Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg

"The remnants of American
liberalism are in a state of denial. They continue to treat the offensive
against democratic rights as an aberration or misunderstanding. They
seek to obscure from the American people the fact that a fundamental
shift has taken place in the direction of dictatorial forms of rule."www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/demo-s11.shtml

"It is no measure of health
to be sane in an insane society."
-- Krishnamurti

"They say commonly in proverbial
style: A wicked man who is thought to be good can do evil and yet not
have it believed."
p. 217, The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio, Translated
by Richard Aldington Garden City Publishing Company 1930

"Monsters do exist, but they are too few
in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men,
those functionaries willing to think and to act without asking questions."
-- Primo Levi

Not
See's and Nazis

In 1941, the Nazis invaded Lithuania, imprisoned
the Jews of Vilna into a ghetto, and started killing thousands of them
in a pit outside of the town. After a while, a woman managed to stagger
back to the ghetto after only being wounded at the shooting pits. The
doctor who treated her became convinced she was telling the truth, and
tried to warn the rest of the community about the fate the Nazis had
in store for them. He found it extremely difficult to persuade people
- not because they'd done any research of their own to discredit the
story - but because psychologically it was too difficult to cope with,
and therefore denial was used instead to get through the misery of their
daily lives. Needless to say, everyone was eventually killed save those
who hid or fled to the forests. This story is from the book "Treblinka"
by Jean-Francois Steiner.

The reluctance of American society to examine
the American Reichstag Fire is similar to this story.

On 31 August 1941, before the ghettos were established,
Abba Kovner, a young Jew, witnessed an Aktion commence, as a result
of which 2,019 Jewish women, 864 men and 817 children were taken from
Vilnius in trucks to Ponary and murdered. Nobody knew of their fate
until on 3 September 1941, a dishevelled Jewish woman arrived in the
city. She spoke to a doctor, Meir Mark Dvorjetsky. Wounded, she had
escaped from Ponary. It was not a labour camp but an extermination
site. The woman was alive because men were shot first. Only by being
amongst the last to be shot and thus not covered by the bodies of
those already dead or mortally wounded, could a person survive.
On 1 September 1941, 4,000-5,000 (3,700 - according to EK3 chief SS-Standartenführer
Karl Jäger) Vilnius Jews were herded together by the Germans.
An endless column walked through the nocturnal streets. Nearly nobody
knew what would happen to them. One day later, on 2 September 1941,
the witness Sakowicz saw them arriving at the Ponary killing site.
Only two girls survived this massacre by crawling out of the pits:
the 16 years-old Pesia Szlos and the 11 years-old Judyta Trojak.
After 3 September 1941, six survivors are known to have crawled out
of the pit alive. All of them were girls or women. Dvorjetsky related
the woman’s story to a gathering of Vilnius' Jews. They refused
to believe him, accusing him of panic mongering. The Aktion continued
for four days, resulting in 8,000 deaths.

from the book Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally, regarding the
refusal of the Judenrat (Nazi installed Jewish Council) in the Krakow
Ghetto to disclose to their fellow Jews their knowledge of the Belzec
death camp

"It was no use bringing such tidings to the Judenrat.
The Judenrat Council did not consider it civilly advisable
to tell the ghetto dwellers anything about the camps. people would
merely be distressed; there would be disorder in the streets, and
it would not go unpunished. It was always better to let people hear
wild rumors, decide they were exaggerated, fall back on hope."

Chaim Engel, Sobibor survivor, interview with USHMM, discussing arriving at the death camp

www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/chaim%20engel.html

Well let me say that we hear in Poland what happens with the Jews. They kill Jews and they gas Jews and things like that.
But we really as young people, we really didn't believe that something like that is possible. We thought, "Maybe the younger people will be taken to work – maybe only the older people….."
You just didn't want to believe, because it was so incomprehensible, so unbelievable that something like that can happen that you just – even if you had the intelligence, you didn't believe it.

Attorney General: When you came there, did you know
what was the place you had arrived at?
Witness Lindwasser: No. I knew it was Treblinka, but we did not know
the purpose.
Q. Had you heard about Treblinka in Warsaw?
A. We had heard about Treblinka.
Q. Did you know that Jews were being exterminated at Treblinka?
A. We did not believe it.
Q. You did not believe it. Why?
A. Why? This would, perhaps, be difficult to answer. Possibly, it is
an individual matter for each person. One simply could not grasp that
such a thing was possible - actual extermination. Rumours reached Warsaw
that the Germans were sending people out to work. And simply, it was
better to cling to this idea.

from the fourth leaflet of the White Rose (German student group that dared to publish leaflets about the Holocaust,
1942)

"With total brutality the chasm that separates
the better portion of the nation from everything that is identified
with National Socialism must be opened wide. For Hitler and his followers
there is no punishment on this earth commensurate with their crimes.
But out of love for coming generations we must make an example after
the conclusion of the war, so that no one will ever again have the slightest
urge to try a similar action. And do not
forget the petty scoundrels in this regime; note their names, so that
none will go free! They should not find it possible, having had their
part in these abominable crimes, at the last minute to rally to another
flag and then act as if nothing has happened!"www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/german/ftp.py?orgs/german//white-rose/leaflet-04

second leaflet of the White Rose, 1942

Why tell you these things, since you are fully
aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub-humanity? Because here we touch
on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought.
Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all
these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that. It is accepted as fact and put out
of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid
sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity
to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so. Is
this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human
feelings, that no chord within them cried out at the sight of such deeds,
that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they
will never, never awake? It seems to be so, and will certainly be so,
if the German does not at least start up out of his stupor, if he does
not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals,
if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims.
He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity
in guilt. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men
the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government"
which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt;
indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all!
Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues
on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot
be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty! It is not too late, however,
to do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government,
so as to avoid being burdened with even greater guilt. Now, when in
recent years our eyes have been opened, when we know exactly who our
adversary is, it is high time to root out this brown horde. Up until
the outbreak of the war the larger part of the German people were blinded;
the Nazis did not show themselves in their true aspect. But now, now
that we have recognized them for what they are, it must be the sole
and first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these beasts.www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/german/ftp.py?orgs/german//white-rose/leaflet-02

[-] Jerry McManus on May 5, 2008 - 3:59pm | Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
All sounds good. Only one thing in the way. Us.

This has all been written of, theorized about and sincerely pondered for at least 40 years.

Thanks for bringing that up, I had much the same reaction.

This is going to sound monstrously off-topic, but bear with me. There was a show on PBS the other night that dramatized the miraculous escape of two men from Auschwitz during WWII. After several days of severe hardship they managed to make it to the border and freedom, wherepon they immediately set out to warn the nearest Jewish council of what was happening in the death camps, something the Nazi's had largely been able to conceal through deception.

The reaction? No one believed them. The deportation of the Hungarian Jews went ahead as scheduled and 100's of thousands were sent to the gas chambers, choosing to believe instead they were only being relocated to work camps despite having been warned of the truth.

Similar stories have been told by other survivors in the camps who tried to warn people even as they were being herded naked into the "shower room", and they too were met with disbelief.

Even today, aid workers who have witnessed the death, er, I mean the refugee camps in Africa have found that they cannot talk about their experiences for more than a minute or two before their friends politely change the subject.

What's my point? If the truth is too terrible to hear, it's simply part of human nature to deny it. The ghastly and horrific prospect of the human population crashing and billions dying due to depleted resources, wasted soils, poisoned air and water, and devastated ecosystems has been clearly articulated for several decades now, but what do you know, no one wants to hear it.

Cheers,
Jerry

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[-] teoc on May 5, 2008 - 4:23pm | Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Thanks for that, much more eloquently profound in a blood freezing kind of way.

Denial is a powerful part of the human mind.

We are all frogs sitting in the proverbial pot of water that is being brought to a boil and this fact has been brought to our reptilian attention for at least 40 years in various persuasive and popular venues.

It is like the story about the frog and the scorpion looking for a ride across the river...well you know the story. The punch line/death scene comes with the scorpion having stung the frog is asked by said frog, "Why did you do that now we are both going to die!" To which the scorpion says "Couldn't be helped, it's in my nature."

I guess some of us have the nature of frogs and some of us have the nature of scorpions and so far the scorpions among us would seem to have the upper hand.

But I am rooting for my fellow frogs to pull it out in the final inning—can't be helped it's in my nature.

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[-] Carolus Obscurus on May 5, 2008 - 4:25pm | Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
You are monstrously on topic, actually.

There a still a handful of diehards who don't believe that Jews were murdered en masse during WWII -- and a very large number who don't believe that the Ukrainian famine ever occurred, or that there was an Armenian Holocaust. Etcetera. And yes, it's part of human nature to deny these realities.

No problem -- when I hear the word Africa, I reach for my remote control. I switch channels. That's the big question: if millions die in a famine, and the media are there to cover it, and you change programmes once you hear the A-word, did that famine really happen?

Remove from me the way of falsehood,
and favor me with your law.
The way of truth I have chosen;
I have set your ordinances before me.
Psalm 119: 29-30
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/042604.htm

"Reality is a thin line between denial and
paranoia."- author unknown"It is no measure of health to be sane in an insane society." -- Krishnamurti

Dear Friends,

Most Americans, including many liberals and critics of
the Bush administration, have bought the official story that 9-11 was
perpetrated by Al Qa'eda, and the only questions to be asked have to do
with the failure of intelligence. Those who
question this story and want to investigate other possibilities are dismissed
as "conspiracy kooks".
As a practicing psychiatrist, I hear many stories from my patients about
how they are being conspired against. Some of the stories are psychotic
paranoia, others are all too real. A woman being abused by her spouse,
for instance, is truly being persecuted, and the perpetrator may have
the whole family convinced that she is "crazy". I would be remiss
if I didn't take her story seriously.I recommend a website, www.oilempire.us/denial.html that examines the extent to which the liberal press has supported the
party line on 9-11and suppressed or marginalized skeptics. Below,
I have reprinted a review by historian Howard Zinn of a new book, The
New Pearl Harbor- Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and
9/11 by David Ray Griffin- "an eminent philosopher and theologian".
I have my own list of disturbing questions about 9-11, which any reputable
DA would find basis enough to investigate a possible conspiracy on the
part of the Bush bunch. No doubt my questions overlap a lot with Griffin's,
and I think they bear repeating.

1) As the 9-11 Commission has pointed out, there were
many, many egregious lapses of intelligence and failures to follow through
on intelligence, prior to 9-11. Doesn't this indicate a pattern of permissiveness
toward, if not complicity with, Al Qa'eda?
2) There are many instances of prior inside knowledge about 9-11 on the
part of unnamed higher-ups, ranging from personal precautions and warnings
to friends, to insider stock trading, to preparations for a large press
corps at an elementary school where Bush was visiting that day. Who knew
what, when? Prior knowlege amounts to aiding
and abetting.
3) Bush's behavior on that terrible day is bizarre and inexplicable, and
no attempt has made to explain or even question it. He was clearly not
surprised by the news of 9-11, was not in charge of his own movements
or of the country, and acted in a cowardly manner. Who was pulling his strings?
4) Many accounts of the actual attack have been questioned by reputable
investigators, including who was on board the planes, what really hit
the Pentagon, what caused the twin towers,
and especially Building 7 which was never hit, to collapse,
why did America's air defenses stand down,
and on and on. These questions deserve investigation.
5) The behavior of the administration since the attack has been suspicious
in many ways. They allowed a planeload of Bin Laden relatives to leave
when all other flights were shut down. They have exploited 9-11 to invade twocountries which
were already on their agenda because of oil interests. They have also
used it to pass legislation which shreds the Constitution and allows the
institution of a fascist state. They have obstructed an investigation
every way they can.
6) Many witnesses from within the administration have risked their jobs
and reputations to come forward and testify that their bosses are lying,
and that there is much more to the story than we have been told.

Americans have a right to the truth about 9-11. Co-conspirators
are traitors, and deserve the maximum penalty.
Let us not allow the terrible mess they are making in Iraq to distract
us from exposing their misdeeds and lies at home.

.... This de facto regime then organizes a very interesting
cabinet. The Vice President is an oil executive and the former Secretary
of Defense. The National Security Advisor is a director on the board of
a transnational oil corporation and a Russia scholar. The Secretary of
State is a man with no diplomatic experience whatsoever, and the former
Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The other interesting appointment
is Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld is the former CEO
of Searle Pharmaceuticals. He and Cheney were featured as speakers at
the May, 2000, Russian-American Business Leaders Forum. So the consistent
currents in this cabinet are petroleum, the former Soviet Union, and the
military.
Based on the record of Daddy Bush, in all his guises, and the general
trajectory of US foreign policy as far back as the Carter Administration,
I feel I can reasonably conclude that Middle Eastern and South Asian fossil
fuels are one of their major preoccupations. Not just because this klavern
has some very direct financial interests in fossil fuel, but because they
surely know that worldwide oil production is peaking as we speak, and
will soon begin a permanent and precipitous decline that will completely
change the character of civilization as we know it within 20 years. Even
the left seems to be in deep denial about this, but the math is available.
And, no, alternative energies and energy technologies will not save us.
All the alternatives in the world can not begin to provide more than a
tiny fraction of the energy base now provided by oil. This makes it more
than a resource, and the drive to control what's left more than an economic
competition.
I further conclude that the economic colonization of the former Soviet
Union is probably high on that agenda, and in fact has a powerful synergy
with the issue of petroleum. Russia not only holds vast untapped resources
that beckon to imperialism in crisis, it remains a credible military and
nuclear challenger in the region.
We have not one, but three members of the Bush de facto cabinet with military
credentials, which makes the cabinet look quite a lot like a military
General Staff. All this way before September 11th.

Certainly, the Bush de facto administration was facing
a confluence of crises from which they were temporarily rescued by this
event. Whether they played a sinister role or not, there is little doubt
that they have at the very least opportunistically pounced on this attack
to overcome their lack of legitimacy, to shift the blame for the encroaching
recession from capitalism to the September 11th terror attack, to legitimize
their pre-existing foreign policy agenda, and to establish and consolidate
repressive measures domestically and silence dissent. In many ways, September
11th pulled the Bush cookies out of the fire.
....
And given them the green light to begin constructing a long-term scenario
within which to establish fascistic control measures at home and abroad
as a citadel for the ruling class in the catastrophic conjuncture that
we are entering based on the end of oil. The empire is beginning to unravel.
We can hardly justify intervention in these places by saying they are
not towing the economic line by allowing the absolute domination of their
societies by transnational corporations. That exposes the agenda. So we
simply claim they are supporting terrorism.
It's for all these reasons I say the left
has missed the boat on this one, by allowing them to get away with rushing
past the question of who did what on September 11th. If the official story
is a lie, and I think the circumstantial case is strong enough to stay
with this question, then we really do need to know what happened. And
we need to understand concretely what the motives of this administration
are.
And we need to understand more than just their immediate motives, but
where the larger social forces that underwrite our situation right now
are headed. I do not think this administration is engaged in the deliberative
process of a political grouping that is on top of their game. They are
putting together some very deliberative technical solutions in response
to a larger situation that it slipping rapidly out of their control. Like
clear cutting. There's a very smart technology being employed to do a
very dumb thing.
What they are responding to is not September 11th, but the beginning of
a permanent and precipitous decline in worldwide oil production, the beginning
of a deep and protracted worldwide recession, and the unraveling of the
empire.
....The left, if it has the capacity to self-organize
out of its oblivion, needs to understand its critical roles here. We have
to play the role of credible, hard-working, and non-sectarian partners
in a broader peace-movement. We have to study, synthesize, and describe
our current historical conjuncture. And we have to prepare
leadership for the decisive conflict that will emerge to first defeat
fascism then take political power.
Rosa Luxemburg's words are truer than ever right now. We are not faced
with a choice between socialism and capitalism, but socialism or barbarism.
And what we can least afford are denial and timidity.
Stan Goff

Denial lies at the heart of this unusual Left reaction.
Many activists have looked at the questions, thought about the answers
for a bit, and retreated in horror in the face of implications. If
the government had foreknowledge and let the attacks happen, or worse,
actually took part in facilitating them, then the American state is far
more vicious than they could have imagined.And if so, what would happen to them should they vocalize this?
Needless to say, this would greatly raise the stakes of political
action well beyond the relatively superficial level that even many leftists
operate at. It would be impossible to go on living as before,
being essentially a spectator whose life is work/shopping/entertainment,
with the occasional political rally, lecture or movie to spice things
up and make one feel involved. People like that, or even ones
more involved with some regular effort at political reform, could no longer
feel that the political situation could be changed for the better through
small, incremental steps, a 100 year or even 500 year plan. This
prospect is thoroughly unsettling, and is easier to deal with if simply
dismissed outright. ...

Beneath unconscious motivations also lie some conscious
agendas. Those on the Left who have embraced “critical support”
for a “limited response” war will no doubt not wish to have
their political bankruptcy exposed. But even most of those who oppose
the War have nevertheless accepted the notion that the U.S. was attacked
by a vicious enemy. For some, this represents an opportunity to promote
their moralistic approach: let us respond in an appropriate, moral and
non-military manner. Others, such as Chomsky, Michael Albert, Howard Zinn
and Alex Cockburn, simply trot out the “blowback” explanation:
this horrible attack happened because America has done bad things, has
not listened to “us” (wag, wag the finger), and better start
changing its policies (as if an empire can be run in a nice way!). Yet
others who disagree with war boosters like Katrina van den Heuvel of The
Nation nevertheless buy their thesis that the war promotes increasing
state powers (e.g., making airport baggage inspectors federal employees),
and this amounts to a move towards “socialism”. If the events
of 9/11 were not what they seemed to be, this takes away the chance to
promote these political programs, perhaps to even advance certain careers.

... Given this history, no-one can reasonably dismiss
the possibility of US Government involvement - if only by looking the
other way - in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. And yet
this is just what the overwhelming majority of Pacifica programming staff
do.Taking their cues from Norman Solomon, Chip Berlet, Steve Rendall
et al ., and without bothering to look at any evidence as far as I can
tell, they pooh-pooh some of the best research around and endorse a smear
campaign against Mike
Ruppert, one of the most honest, hardworking researchers I know. They
do this despite serious input from their own reporters (including me)
and repeated calls from listeners.
In short, ignore the evidence, ignore their own reporters, ignore their
own listeners, they're gonna kill the story if they possibly can, citing
vague concerns about "credibility." For years Larry
Bensky has cut off callers who raised issues ranging from Federal Reserve
chicanery to 9-11 coverups. I have heard from another reporter that decades
ago he had given Philip Maldari tape of a US Special Forces operative
talking about the CIA's protection of Central American drug smuggling.
The tape never aired, nor did Maldari ever respond. I'm told that Kris
Welch told a caller that KPFA's Program Council, on the advice of people
they "respect," decided that the issue of foreknowledge/complicity
in 9-11 within the US Government was not worth airtime. (They were referring
specifically to Ruppert's work, but reducing the issue to "Mike Ruppert"
is ridiculous. There are lots of good sources; it is the issue, not the
personalities, which counts.). I have emailed both Bensky and Welch, but
have received no response.
Kellia Ramares and I have distributed 50 copies of an open letter to KPFA
staff addressing the issue (which may have contributed to the survival
of "Guns and Butter," one of the few exceptions to the culture
of denial). I have spoken with Mark Mericle and Aileen Alfandary in person
about the obscene attacks on Ruppert, and I know that neither had actually
read the work they were panning. Aileen admitted it, and Mark's screechings
revealed that he didn't know what he was talking about; he was merely
parroting the party line as handed down by Solomon. The News Dept.'s written
policy says that controversies within the station or network will get
covered just like any other story; I approached Mark months ago pointing
out that by that logic they needed to cover the furor over the 9-11 story,
and he handed it off to Max Pringle. I haven't heard a peep out of either
since.
I don't know what pressures they may be under. Undoubtedly if they step
outside the box of "credibility" (defined for them by the Solomon/Korn/Berlet/Rendall
camp) they will be mercilessly slammed by all of their supposed allies.
But their behavior keeps important information off the air. As long as
they and their ilk have any significant influence on programming, its
integrity will suffer. If Pacifica is to be anything more than a chic
cover for our government's worst abominations, it must face - and broadcast
- reality. How can we make this safe?
In sadness,
Ed Rippy
KPFA News

Everyone is in on it. At a subconscious level, Americans
want control of everything, think they are entitled to it. I don't mean
every individual American of course, but the culture and mythos of the
US has this in it very, very deep. So many flagarant lies. The media,
the dems, the people... all look away and let it go on. From the outset,
"manifest destiny" has been a self-evident truth to the populace.
A very sick and sickening society. Apologies to decent individual Americans
who are trying their best, but continually and forever keep getting ignored,
and worse. And much more than apologies to those who have been bulldozed
by the US, worldwide and for a long time. Wake up America, and look at
your ugliness.
Posted by Sandalwood, Canada at October 23, 2003 02:03 PM http://billmon.org.v.sabren.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=811

... There are certain types of progressives, of the Jim
Hightower, Molly Ivins, Studs Terkel, Al Franken variety that move with
ease between the liberal to moderate left spectrum - i.e. the polite
radicals who do not really rudely offend the sensibilities of the liberal
establishment (everybody is so fixated on 'the right' that we
all forget the significance and power of the liberal elite at the commanding
heights of the corporate state). Indeed, if you miss Molly Ivins on the
Morning Show, you can rest assured that you will catch her on Michael
Krasney's show on KQED. Beyond this, David Barsamian is from time to time
able to get away with broadcasting Arhundhati Roy or Noam Chomsky - but
again, even Chomsky is by now part of mainstream 'left' political discourse
and not beyond the pale.

I must say that I have been shocked by the behavior of
"the progressive Left," since they cancelled the big protests
against the White House last September [2001] and the Sierra Club suggested
that people "lay off" the attacks on Bush. People that
I have known, admired and whose work I have promoted over the years- Noam
Chomsky, Michael Albert, Norman Solomon... instead of critically examining
the events of September 11th, have accepted the official story and attacked
those of us who are raising questions!!!! I honestly don't know
if they are mentally impaired, stupid, scared, or have been co-opted into
"protecting the status quo and their positions of honor and prestige."
However, they are gatekeepers barring the dissemination of critical
information, and I am frankly mad at them. Instead of wasting time bickering
within the "movement for peace and justice"- we should be able
to clearly recognize the fascist attack that we are facing now.

John McMurty wrote this in response to Michael
Albert, of Z Magazine's attacks upon those "raising questions."

New Book Examines Possible White House Role in 9/11 Attacks
06-Dec-02 review by democrats.comIn "The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked",
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed of the Institute for Policy Research and Development
in the UK examines the big picture created by information from
"respected sources including The New York Times, The Boston Globe,
the San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal" about
what happened before, during, and after September 11, 2001. He reports
on high-level orders preventing investigations of suspected terrorists
before September 11; warnings that various well-known people received
that caused them to cancel travel plans; the Air Force's deviation from
standard procedures when the planes were hijacked on September 11; business
connections between the Bushes and the bin Ladin family, and mysterious
stock transactions just before September 11; and the inconsistencies
in the stories from the White House about what happened that day and
why.

"9/11 "Conspiracies" and the Defactualisation
of Analysis
How Ideologues on the Left and Right Theorise Vacuously to Support Baseless
Supposition A Reply to ZNet's 'Conspiracy Theory?' Section,"
by By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed (author of "The War on Freedom")www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq37.html

MalcontentX also wrote an excellent piece on the "Left"
posted at www.communitycurrency.org/LEFT.htmlWhat's "LEFT" to Talk About?
A Discussion On Why Many of the Leading Voices on the "Left"
Have Avoided Asking Questions About the "official story" Surrounding
The Events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Left Denial on 9/11 Turns Irrational
by Jack Straw
www.indybay.org/news/2005/05/1736367.php 6 May 2005

People like Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill
are turning toward the irrational as they continue to deny increasing
signs that 9/11 was an inside job.
Ever since the events of 9/11, the American Left and even ultra-Left have
been downright fanatical in combating notions that the U.S. government
was complicit in the attacks or at least had foreknowledge of the events.
Lately, this stance has taken a turn towards the irrational.

[note: the "Left Denial" article is generally
very good about the strange myopia of the "left" about 9/11,
but it is marred by a strange focus on alleged, unprovable assertions
of temperature inside the burning towers that supposedly means they
were demolished, and most of the web links
for additional information are bogus. The
"Left Denial" article ignores the evidence about foreknowledge,
warnings to insiders, the stock trades on United and American Airlines
just before 9/11, the anthrax attacks on the media and the Democrats,
the motivation of Peak Oil and creating the pretext for invading the
Middle East oil fields, among other issues that have very strong evidence
for complicity. These omissions help the leftists in denial avoid the
best evidence of complicity.]

This is what the left has to ask: Will the ordinary political
process get rid of Bush, can it slow down his assault? If the answer is
yes, see exhibit A: Cynthia McKinney. If no, then what is the alternative
strategy? If normal anti-war activism, such as what was seen during Vietnam,
doesn't work as a practicable analog, then what is the way to go? Do you
challenge a fascist dictator with rallies and demonstrations (that is,
if people are not afraid of being put in jail)? Will the left continue
to underestimate Bush's shrewdness? It wasn't just the accident of hanging
chads and butterfly ballots that let the Bush brothers manipulate the
result in their favor. The left doesn't want to throw the legitimacy
of the political process into question, and so it treads softly. The mostly
identity-politics driven left, with its few cautious moves toward including
suburban progressives in an economic strategy that doesn't alienate anyone,
is at a loss to deal with the fascist upsurge. DO YOU CONTEST FASCISM
WITH MILD, MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD ALTERNATIVES? For too long the
left has encouraged the culture of fear to promote its social agenda.
Now this vocabulary is easily being appropriated by the fascists.If the left radically questioned the official presumptions, it
would have to embark on a path of thinking that it has not really considered.
Its diagnosis of the problem would shift. It would have to ask this uncomfortable
question (not exactly conducive to letting one continue being
a pundit on Fox or MSNBC): What is the role of the liberal opposition
during a fascist dictatorship?

My wife Trudy was born in Germany and came here as a young
child. When she was in her late teens, she returned there for a year to
live and work. As she began to reacquaint herself with family members,
she felt bold and comfortable enough to ask them the difficult questions:
How was it that the Holocaust could happen? What had they known? What
had they done?

The answers she received could be summed up as: "We’d
heard rumors about the death camps, but our government told us it was
American propaganda -- and that’s what we believed." Now before
we cast judgment about how bad the "good" Germans were, a little
perspective. In his book Laughter In Hell: The Use of Humor During the
Holocaust, Steve Lipman (who is Jewish) maintains that in the early days,
Hitler was an object of ridicule. Many, if not most Germans didn’t
like him. However, once Hitler came to power -- and showed muscle -- the
average non-Jewish, non-communist, non-homosexual German faced a decision:
Enroll themselves in Hitler’s vision of Deutschland Über Alles
-- or make their lives unpleasant and their deaths untimely.

In "Matrix" language, they could either choose
the Red Pill of painful awareness, or the Blue Pill of blissful ignorance.
Those Germans whose conscience and consciousness offered them no choice
but to choose the Red Pill realized they were very likely choosing a death
sentence. For the Germans who swallowed the Blue Pill, the initial decision
was easier. But as the war dragged on and the illusion shattered, they
too ultimately had to face the awful truth about the devil’s mission
they’d signed on to. While some continued, no doubt, to deny any
wrongdoing until the day that they died, others had to live with the sad
truth that there had been a "tipping point" which gave the Nazis
absolute power -- and that the German people had missed the point.

Fast forward sixty or seventy years from Nazi Germany
to Not-See America, and those of us who haven’t swallowed the pill
of "American Security Through World Domination" are seeing that
tipping point looming on the horizon and coming closer each day. To use
a familiar analogy, when you throw a frog into boiling water (please don’t
try this at home), he will immediately leap out and save himself. But
if you put a frog in room temperature water and bring it to a slow boil,
the frog will never sense the increase in temperature ... until he’s
cooked.

As soon as Richard Nixon left office in disgrace nearly
thirty years ago, a small cadre of conservatives made their own twisted
vow of "never again." Beginning with the Reagan Administration
(which friends of mine living in Washington at the time called "the
meanest and most ruthless" they’d ever seen -- up until that
point, of course), on through the Lee Atwater campaign for George the
First, through Gingrich era in Congress, through the stealing of the election
in 2000, and up to the current stonewalling going on, the temperature
has been rising. And folks, we’re nearly cooked.

1 So what is it that will cause us to sit up, take notice,
and jump out of the pot? When will we realize -- a la that 50s song "Stranded
In the Jungle" -- that what we smell cooking is our cherished freedom
and democracy? What will it take for us to say, "Great googamooga
-- lemme outta here!"?

First we must face that it is the "Not-Sees"
who enable the Nazis to come into power. In further conversation, Trudy’s
relatives admitted that they believed what their government was telling
them because it was easier to believe that than to face the huge lie and
horrible truth. A little closer to home, here is an actual response that
a real human being offered recently when confronted with a particularly
egregious perpetration by our current Administration: "Well, it may
be true but I don’t believe it."

Unbelievable? Believe it. Notice how out-of-the-comfort-zone
topics get relegated to the box of "conspiracy theories." Here
is my new working definition of "conspiracy
theory": a conspiracy theory is something that if true, would
be too threatening to face. So why even go there? Well, because we may
be "going there" like it or not, and if we have the awareness
we can stop the chain of events before we find that it is we who are in
chains. And maybe it’s time for us to call those who refuse to connect
the very connectable dots "coincidence theorists."

To put it another way, what if you had a life-threatening
condition and finding out about it now would make it treatable and curable?
Would it be worth the temporary discomfort -- if not outright horror --
in facing something too threatening to face? There are people, after all,
who "wouldn’t face the truth to save their life." I assert
the body politic -- or at least the design offered to us by the Founding
Fathers -- is in grave danger. What Lincoln called "government of
the people, by the people, for the people" has not yet perished from
this earth. But it is on life support. And its life is in our hands.

So what are we not seeing? And what can we do?

First of all, I think it is wise to not strain the Nazi
/ Not-See analogy, but rather to use the parallel for clarity. So here
is the point: Good, decent people can be manipulated by fear and prejudice
to bring to power a force of evil disguised as security and protection.
All it takes is for them to look the other way (i.e., not see) or wish
it weren’t so, for that dark power to entrench itself absolutely.
And we all know that in human affairs, power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.
Here are a few dots, and you can make your own connections:

1. The 2000 Election. There is irrefutable evidence that
tens of thousands of African-American voters in Florida were purposely
disenfranchised by a plan implemented to weed out "felons."
Most of the people turned away at the polls were not felons, but no matter.
There was no redress, no revote, and the results stood. Tom DeLay dispatched
a gang of intimidators disguised as "citizens" to disrupt the
vote recount in Dade County. The Supreme Court made the final decision,
and the selection results were 5-4, along ideological lines.

2. Sen. Jim Jeffords. In 2001, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont
actually left the Republican Party and switched to Independent so as to
deny the Republicans a majority in the Senate. Why? He was concerned about
the strong-arm tactics being used by the Republican leadership.

3. 9/11. On September 10th, President Bush’s popularity
ratings were ... well, they were unpopularity ratings. Afterward? He became
the Fearless Leader of the "Free" World. Four big unanswered
questions about 9/11 still remain unanswered, and largely unasked:

* Why were the FBI agents on the trail of the actual
hijackers in this country -- in their own words -- "thwarted"?
Who did the thwarting and why?
* Who profited from United and American airlines stocks plummeting in
the wake of 9/11? Who did the selling?
* Why were jets not scrambled immediately
after the plane hit the first tower? Why the delay?
* Why were Osama bin Laden’s relatives whisked out of the country
right after 9/11, and never interrogated by the FBI?

4. The 2002 Election. Let’s start with the elephant
-- I mean the donkey -- in the living room, Sen.
Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota), and his death in a plane crash. Now
imagining that this was "no accident" is far-fetched, and over
a line not many of us would like to cross. But when a regime is ruthless
and secretive, conspiracy theories proliferate and undermine trust. The
fact that many non-paranoid citizens harbor suspicions about this event,
should in itself be considered a cause for concern.

So I would leave this one entirely up to the coincidence
theorists: Two elections over a two-year period, two Democratic Senators
(one of them the leading liberal voice in the Senate, the other running
against John Ashcroft in Missouri), and two plane crashes. What are the
odds? Pete Rose, can you help us out here? Or, it could very well be that
Pat Robertson is right, and God is indeed siding with the Republicans.

Meanwhile in Georgia, where Diebold touch screen voting machines were used, there were two electoral upsets
that defied the polls done just days before the voting. Both the Democratic
candidate for Governor and the popular war veteran Sen. Max Cleland were
inexplicably defeated. Sen. Cleland, incidentally, was subject to a mean
and merciless character assassination campaign. Guess that beats real
assassination.

5. The War on Iraq. According to recent testimony by
Richard Clarke and others, this war was being planned from the day George
W. Bush set foot in the White House (earlier, actually) and that the "diplomatic
efforts" were a charade while war plans proceeded unfettered (shades
of Hitler). In the wake of 9/11 and based on what is now known to be "spun"
information, Congress was leveraged into a new War Powers Act, giving
President Bush the power to make war on Iraq. While the majority of Americans
would have supported this war only with the full backing of the United
Nations, the war went forward without the support of the UN, the majority
of people in the world, or for that matter the majority of Americans.

6. The Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Case. When Joseph
Wilson blew the whistle on the false report of Saddam getting nuclear
weapons from Niger, someone at the White House leaked the identity of
his wife, Valerie Plame, and blew her cover as an antiterrorist CIA operative,
putting her life in danger and ending her career. This is not only an
act of high treason, but we lost a valuable operative, someone it took
years to establish and perhaps millions of dollars to train. So far ...
no one has been prosecuted, and the White House has not been held accountable.

And on and on and on. We see an Administration that has
put itself above the law in every way imaginable. We have a President
who received less than 50% of the popular vote, who was elected by barely
25% of eligible voters. He proclaimed himself "a uniter, not a divider"
and a "compassionate conservative," and yet he has consistently
represented only two groups: The huge corporate interests that contributed
to his campaign, and the Religious Right. He has ruled, not as an elected
President but as a dictator who has forced his worldview (or more likely,
his handlers’ worldview) onto all of us.

The Administration’s heavy-handed dictates have
squeezed scientists who don’t buy the fundamentalist Christian ideology
out of research positions, and pushed moderate Republicans and all others
who don’t agree with him out the door as well. Think of Paul O’Neill,
Richard Clarke and other lifelong Republicans who were drummed out of
government service, then subjected to smear campaigns and worse. Think
of the OMB employee who was prohibited from telling Congress the real
cost of the Prescription Drug Bill under threat of losing his job.

And take the press -- please! We have an Administration
playing full-on hardball and a press playing hardly-have-balls, lobbing
hittable grapefruits and failing to field the easiest grounders. Where
have you gone, Edward R. Murrow, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you?
Why isn’t the press doing any pressing? Well, probably because the
press is owned by the same corporate interests who’ve bought the
Presidency.

Here is an interesting stat: Even when polls show George
Bush trailing a Democratic opponent, a majority of people nonetheless
believe that Bush will be reelected. What’s that about? It would
seem to indicate a "disheartenment in the heartland," a sinking
feeling that a regime that has consistently used lying and intimidation
to thwart the will of the people and flaunt the rule of law will somehow
find a way to stay in power once again this fall.

But seriously, folks ... we here in Not-See America may
be coming very close to the tipping point where there is no longer any
check or balance against a regime that knows no restraint. Or, we may
just as likely be reaching a turning point where concerned citizens from
all shades of the political spectrum begin speaking out and acting out
to return the rule of law to America, and to reestablish a government
that is truthful, just, and appropriately transparent.

I guess I am basically an idealist with a profound respect
for the vision and courage of our Founding Fathers. They went up against
a worldview that had dominated for centuries, proclaiming each individual
a sovereign citizen, not a subject. The cliché is that every generation
must defend freedom, liberty and our democratic way of life. In the past,
this has looked like stepping onto foreign soil armed with a weapon. In
our time it means standing on our own soil, unarmed except for the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution.

So, what is to be done? What comes to mind (to the cynical
part of my mind, anyway) is the classic cartoon. It’s a dungeon
scene, and two very old men with long, white beards and in tatters, are
strung up in chains. One is saying to the other, "Now, here’s
my plan..." At the risk of sounding like that cartoon, here is my
plan:

1. The Committee of 100. What if one hundred (or more)
prominent Americans from all political stripes declared a state of Emerge
‘n See, where we emerge from our fear and our Not-See trance, and
face the truth of where our nation has been going, and make the conscious
and courageous choice to change direction? They say the truth shall set
you free, but first it will piss you off. In order to face the truth,
we need leadership. And in this case, one hundred leaders are better than
one. One hundred leaders can speak in one hundred different places at
once. And by sheer numbers, they can encourage other truth-tellers and
whistle-blowers to stand up and speak up.

As for who would be involved, I see Democrats, Republicans,
Greens, Libertarians, Independents -- people like Bill Moyers, Arianna
Huffington, John Dean, Gen. Anthony Zinni, George Soros, Sen. Robert Byrd,
and well-known names from the fields of entertainment and media, the clergy,
science and academia, business and finance, arts and letters, organized
labor. In fact, I would expect to be surprised by who shows up for this.

Imagine the sense of relief for Americans to realize
that we need not fear our own government. Imagine the genuine inspiration
for the democratic impulse around the world. Imagine a nation facing the
threat of terrorism, and the need to create a just world order -- together,
disagreeing agreeably, but focused on finding the wisest and most functional
pathways.

The Declaration of Emerge ‘n See would be supported
by two things: Truth and reconciliation. In other words, the declaration
should proclaim that the truth will inevitably come out, and that the
truth emerging for us to deal with is more important than punishing any
particular perpetrators. Therefore, those who come forward now will experience
leniency, if not outright pardon. This is a controversial notion, but
it points us in the evolutionary direction of foregoing "getting
even" for getting "odd." In seeing our collective complicity
in the way things are, in creating a profound ceremony of both grief and
forgiveness, we pardon not just the perpetrators, but ourselves -- the
tacit participants.

2. The Canary Project. If we are going to ask the truth-tellers
and whistle-blowers to emerge from hiding, we must take steps to protect
them. The Canary Project is initially a website where anyone can see and
hear video affidavits from the "canaries" who have been silenced,
intimidated or worse. I say "canaries" for two reasons. First,
canaries "sing." Secondly, there is the tradition of releasing
canaries into mines to test for toxic gases. If the canaries die, then
miners know not to enter. In our toxic political climate, if our own canaries
cannot be protected -- well, then ... guess who’s next?

Who knows? Some of these people may need to have their
voices disguised or wear cloth bags on their heads. In order for truth
to out, there needs to be a place for anyone and everyone to hear the
evidence, and the truth. These individuals may in the future testify in
a court of law, once protections are guaranteed. And the best way for
protection to be guaranteed is to have as many Americans as possible to
know about these truth-tellers.

There is the legendary -- and it turns out, apocryphal
-- story about King Christian of Denmark. As the story goes, when the
Nazis invaded Denmark and announced that all Jews must wear a yellow star,
the King and all Danes emerged wearing the star on their shoulders. While
this never actually happened, the story accurately reflected the Danish
attitude of solidarity with its Jewish citizens. Indeed, Danish citizens
often sent care packages to Jews who had been taken to concentration camps,
and just this concern made Danish Jews more protected from brutality.
The lesson is, when we’re all "us" we cannot be separated,
isolated, and picked off.

3. Concerned Clergy. Before the invasion of Iraq, many,
many clergy people in this country expressed concern and opposition to
preemptive warfare. Once the war began -- particularly in the light of
Ari Fleischer’s ominous warning to "watch what you say"
-- many of these concerned ministers, rabbis, priests and other religious
people faded back into the "silenced majority."

Facing the truth requires moral authority, and not the
moral authority of the Religious Right which rails against the "abomination"
of two people of the same sex lying together in love, but looks the other
way when an entire government lies together to perpetrate a "bomb-a-nation."
Instead we need the simple moral authority of the Golden Rule, a version
of which is the keynote of every major religion. We need right now the
spiritual power of many, many people of conscience representing any and
all faiths coming together to pray for the good of all.

Our national motto is E Pluribus Unum, out of many One.
There are many paths, and One Spirit. In recognizing this, we see from
a higher perspective, and religion becomes a true moral compass, not a
tool for political manipulation. Why not have our spiritual leaders raise
the question: How can we create a society where we are One Nation, Under
Good -- instead of what we have now, one nation, under guard?

4. Mothers for a Healthier Future. Just as the principles
of the Golden Rule (at the heart of every religious path) needs to inform
our community and political life, we need the nurturing impulse of the
real "pro-life" movement: mothers who care about their children’s
future. Yes, we must take America back. And to do so, we must have a vision
that takes America forward.

The current powers that be in power offer us perpetual
warfare, environmental destruction, loss of civil liberties, growing gap
between rich and poor, and rule by the Christian version of fundamentalist
ayatollahs. They are pointing us directly backward, to a past of feudalism,
theocracy and rule by royal decree. Let’s allow the mothers of our
nation and the world -- the bringers of life -- to point us towards a
life-affirming vision where we use our resources lovingly, wisely and
creatively.

The fall of the Nixon presidency turned on one small
decision that could have gone either way. Katherine Graham, still "green"
as publisher of the Washington Post and not part of the old boy network,
didn’t realize she was supposed to kill the Watergate story. She
went ahead with it, and we all know what happened. Right now we have a
regime which -- to paraphrase John Dean, who should know -- makes Mr.
Nixon look like Mr. Rogers. They’ve learned their lessons well from
the Vietnam and Nixon eras, to slam shut every possible door of inquiry,
to make sure Americans don’t see pictures of dead soldiers in flag-draped
coffins, or dead children, forever collaterally-damaged.

Look at us. The world’s biggest and baddest superpower,
and we are afraid of our own shadow. Our delicate psyches need to be protected
from pictures of returning coffins. It’s time to courageously face
the heart of darkness – as our Founding Fathers did, and as we are
asking our soldiers in Iraq to do – and shine the light of truth
on all that we have been unwilling to see.

I propose that we declare this Fourth of July a day of
courageous truth telling and visioning for the future of our republic
and the healing of the world. We might even call it "Man Hog Day"
and declare a State of Emerge ‘n See, where we emerge from fear
and denial and see our shadow. Otherwise, we face a long, dark winter
season that truth, justice and the real American way might not survive.

Swami_Beyondananda

Steve Bhaerman is Swami_Beyondananda and a writer and
comedian. His alter ego Swami Beyondananda has a new book out in May,
Swami for Precedent: A 7-Step Plan to Heal the Body Politic and Cure Electile
Dysfunction. Steve and Swami can be found online at www.wakeuplaughing.com